3 ms·

> The cells in our bodies are being progressively replaced. A materialist, naturalist, or physicalist would have trouble explaining how someone could retain the

by comex 6y ago

> The cells in our bodies are being progressively replaced. A materialist, naturalist, or physicalist would have trouble explaining how someone could retain their original identity if nothing of them was left after this process. Suppose I transfer a virtual machine from one physical server to another using some live migration tool. Of course it migrates the state of all running programs. But beyond that, for all practical purposes, the new VM assumes the identity of the old VM: its IP address, its pending requests, its role in a cluster, et cetera. Someone might argue that the new VM is not really the same entity as the old VM; after all, it's stored on a different physical storage medium and processed by a different physical CPU. I'd respond: who cares about the physical storage medium? That's the wrong layer of abstraction to be looking at. A VM does not exist on the plane of matter but on the plane of information. It is not made of hard disks and CPUs, but bits. The hardware is just a way to instantiate it in the physical world; it's not part of its identity. So it is with people, even if we currently lack a way to transfer the bits representing them to different storage media.

pmoriarty 6y ago
Except that a VM hasn't lived through any events in its life (since it's not alive and doesn't experience anything anyway), and no one would care if it had or hadn't. Also, there are no ethical issues with destroying a VM. The same is not the case with people. It would matter to a lot of people if their loved ones were the ones they knew and had intimate contact with, not some clone of theirs that simply shares their appearance and memories. The person to whom it would arguably matter most is the person getting destroyed or killed. What comfort is it to them that some clone of their lives on?
- comex 6y ago
  > Except that a VM hasn't lived through any events in its life (since it's not alive and doesn't experience anything anyway), It has certainly processed events during its lifetime and accumulated data about them (~= experience that a person might get from living through events). There wouldn't be ethical issues with destroying it, but there would be the downside of losing that data; however, migrating it doesn't have that problem. > The person to whom it would arguably matter most is the person getting destroyed or killed. What comfort is it to them that some clone of their lives on? Personally I would have no problem with myself or anybody I know going through such a process. Partly because I would consider the result the same person, but partly because I think more broadly that the difference between "I live on" and "a clone of me lives on" is unimportant. For example, suppose I went through a teleporter but due to some mishap the body at the sending end were not destroyed, so there were two copies of me. If this happened and were detected immediately, both copies of me would freely volunteer to kill themselves in favor of keeping the other one. From my perspective (as either of the copies), the only thing lost would be the memories I made since teleporting, but losing a few minutes' worth of memories is not a big deal and something that happens all the time. Beyond that, the other copy is still "me", so there's nothing to offend my desire for self-preservation. If on the other hand the situation lasted much longer before being detected, so I gained more unique memories, or if it was only a few minutes but I just happened to have some kind of eureka moment in that time, I might be more ambivalent. Ideally there would be some way to merge the memories of the two copies into one person. In that case, I would be interested in intentionally making short-term forks of myself on a regular basis, to be merged later (say, after a few hours), so that I could effectively do multiple things at the same time.
  - jodrellblank 6y ago
    Partly because I would consider the result the same person Do you consider identical twins the same person? Do you consider Abby and Brittany Hensel[1] the same person - they share the same body so they must have shared the same life experiences? > I think more broadly that the difference between "I live on" and "a clone of me lives on" is unimportant. Do you think the difference between "I live on" and "my child lives on" is unimportant? What about the difference between "I live on" and "someone else lives on"? The clone is a different body in a different place, it's the same situation as "I live on" vs "any other human lives on", except for what you believe about the other person. > If this happened and were detected immediately, both copies of me would freely volunteer to kill themselves in favor of keeping the other one. Then why don't you suicide right now, if continuity of experience is that casually irrelevant to you and all you need is a belief that some other body in the universe shares the same ideas you do? There are a lot of people on the planet right now, are you not convinced that someone, somewhere, shares enough of the important ideas with you already? Why not? Is your memory of a dentist's visit in third grade, or your particular grandmother's generic apple pie really that special? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKrvtq5vDmk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKrvtq5vDmk
    - comex 6y ago
      I should have been more clear about the role I believe experiences play. What matters to me is not just a person's concrete memories of experiences, but their unique personality that has been built up by a combination of those experiences, genetics, and a hefty dose of randomness. In the "accidental clone" scenario, I wouldn't just be losing memories of a few minutes of experiences; I'd also be losing whatever delta to my personality the discarded clone went through in those minutes. However, in most cases I wouldn't care because that delta would be miniscule. As I mentioned, a potential problematic case is if I suddenly had a eureka moment in those few minutes that single-handedly changed my personality, but that's pretty unlikely. With Abby and Brittany Hensel, on the other hand, they've had three decades to build up unique personalities, so despite sharing many of the same experiences they're definitely different people. (Plus, there are various sources of divergence between their experiences. For example, each of them will remember a different subset of their experiences, and in any argument between the two of them, each of them would experience being on a different side of the argument.) Similarly, "I live on" and "my child live on" are very different things; a parent and child don't even share most of the same experiences, let alone personality. > Then why don't you suicide right now, if continuity of experience is that casually irrelevant to you and all you need is a belief that some other body in the universe shares the same ideas you do? There are a lot of people on the planet right now, are you not convinced that someone, somewhere, shares enough of the important ideas with you already? Why not? Is your memory of a dentist's visit in third grade, or your particular grandmother's generic apple pie really that special? I'm a special snowflake… just like everybody else. [ed:] I'm not important, but I'm unique; nobody is exactly like me. Do I make the world much better with my existence? Not really. Hopefully I make it a little better; hopefully I don't make it worse; but I'm only one person and not a particularly famous one. But I still want to live, and I want other people who are alive to keep living. Not as a means to some end, but as an ingrained human desire. Yet I choose to interpret "I" as "my special-snowflakeness", as opposed to tying it to some physical object [ed: or continuity or linearity of experience, which I think are largely violated already when I fall asleep or lose memories]. An exact copy of me is the same special snowflake, at least at first, progressively diverging as the two copies start to have different experiences.

by comex 6y ago

pmoriarty 6y ago

Except that a VM hasn't lived through any events in its life (since it's not alive and doesn't experience anything anyway), and no one would care if it had or hadn't. Also, there are no ethical issues with destroying a VM. The same is not the case with people. It would matter to a lot of people if their loved ones were the ones they knew and had intimate contact with, not some clone of theirs that simply shares their appearance and memories. The person to whom it would arguably matter most is the person getting destroyed or killed. What comfort is it to them that some clone of their lives on?

comex 6y ago
> Except that a VM hasn't lived through any events in its life (since it's not alive and doesn't experience anything anyway), It has certainly processed events during its lifetime and accumulated data about them (~= experience that a person might get from living through events). There wouldn't be ethical issues with destroying it, but there would be the downside of losing that data; however, migrating it doesn't have that problem. > The person to whom it would arguably matter most is the person getting destroyed or killed. What comfort is it to them that some clone of their lives on? Personally I would have no problem with myself or anybody I know going through such a process. Partly because I would consider the result the same person, but partly because I think more broadly that the difference between "I live on" and "a clone of me lives on" is unimportant. For example, suppose I went through a teleporter but due to some mishap the body at the sending end were not destroyed, so there were two copies of me. If this happened and were detected immediately, both copies of me would freely volunteer to kill themselves in favor of keeping the other one. From my perspective (as either of the copies), the only thing lost would be the memories I made since teleporting, but losing a few minutes' worth of memories is not a big deal and something that happens all the time. Beyond that, the other copy is still "me", so there's nothing to offend my desire for self-preservation. If on the other hand the situation lasted much longer before being detected, so I gained more unique memories, or if it was only a few minutes but I just happened to have some kind of eureka moment in that time, I might be more ambivalent. Ideally there would be some way to merge the memories of the two copies into one person. In that case, I would be interested in intentionally making short-term forks of myself on a regular basis, to be merged later (say, after a few hours), so that I could effectively do multiple things at the same time.
- jodrellblank 6y ago
  Partly because I would consider the result the same person Do you consider identical twins the same person? Do you consider Abby and Brittany Hensel[1] the same person - they share the same body so they must have shared the same life experiences? > I think more broadly that the difference between "I live on" and "a clone of me lives on" is unimportant. Do you think the difference between "I live on" and "my child lives on" is unimportant? What about the difference between "I live on" and "someone else lives on"? The clone is a different body in a different place, it's the same situation as "I live on" vs "any other human lives on", except for what you believe about the other person. > If this happened and were detected immediately, both copies of me would freely volunteer to kill themselves in favor of keeping the other one. Then why don't you suicide right now, if continuity of experience is that casually irrelevant to you and all you need is a belief that some other body in the universe shares the same ideas you do? There are a lot of people on the planet right now, are you not convinced that someone, somewhere, shares enough of the important ideas with you already? Why not? Is your memory of a dentist's visit in third grade, or your particular grandmother's generic apple pie really that special? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKrvtq5vDmk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKrvtq5vDmk
  - comex 6y ago
    I should have been more clear about the role I believe experiences play. What matters to me is not just a person's concrete memories of experiences, but their unique personality that has been built up by a combination of those experiences, genetics, and a hefty dose of randomness. In the "accidental clone" scenario, I wouldn't just be losing memories of a few minutes of experiences; I'd also be losing whatever delta to my personality the discarded clone went through in those minutes. However, in most cases I wouldn't care because that delta would be miniscule. As I mentioned, a potential problematic case is if I suddenly had a eureka moment in those few minutes that single-handedly changed my personality, but that's pretty unlikely. With Abby and Brittany Hensel, on the other hand, they've had three decades to build up unique personalities, so despite sharing many of the same experiences they're definitely different people. (Plus, there are various sources of divergence between their experiences. For example, each of them will remember a different subset of their experiences, and in any argument between the two of them, each of them would experience being on a different side of the argument.) Similarly, "I live on" and "my child live on" are very different things; a parent and child don't even share most of the same experiences, let alone personality. > Then why don't you suicide right now, if continuity of experience is that casually irrelevant to you and all you need is a belief that some other body in the universe shares the same ideas you do? There are a lot of people on the planet right now, are you not convinced that someone, somewhere, shares enough of the important ideas with you already? Why not? Is your memory of a dentist's visit in third grade, or your particular grandmother's generic apple pie really that special? I'm a special snowflake… just like everybody else. [ed:] I'm not important, but I'm unique; nobody is exactly like me. Do I make the world much better with my existence? Not really. Hopefully I make it a little better; hopefully I don't make it worse; but I'm only one person and not a particularly famous one. But I still want to live, and I want other people who are alive to keep living. Not as a means to some end, but as an ingrained human desire. Yet I choose to interpret "I" as "my special-snowflakeness", as opposed to tying it to some physical object [ed: or continuity or linearity of experience, which I think are largely violated already when I fall asleep or lose memories]. An exact copy of me is the same special snowflake, at least at first, progressively diverging as the two copies start to have different experiences.